Eat Your End of an Era (1/3) By Joe Hakim

1/3, 2/3, 3/3

So I agree to go and watch my mate play a set at the Welly club. I've stopped clubbing, but I go anyway, because he's my mate and I said I would. When I say clubbing, I mean the whole go out take drugs and dance thing. Don't get me wrong, I still go to nightclubs, but I'm not into the whole hard house/trance/techno/whatever scene anymore. Did me 'eadin, in the end. And I can't remember any of the music. I didn't even really like most of it. I first went to Eat Your Words at the arse end of the millennium. I had just returned to Hull after three years in the wilderness to find that all of my friends had become drug fiends of the highest order, and I just fell back into it.

Although I had taken Ecstasy before, this period of my life saw me becoming a regular user, and I spent every weekend for about two years bombed out of my brains on the stuff. Eat Your Words was originally staged at the Gypsy Moth before moving to the Fez club. Moving to the Fez kicked the hard house/trance/techno/whatever scene into the mainstream, creating a huge rise in popularity amongst the casual drinker/clubber hybrids like myself. The sun-bleached corporate Ibiza sound dominated most of the clubs during the mid to late nineties, but in Hull there was a real effort to play shit that was harder and faster than everybody else's. Hull became the spiritual home of the beats generated by people like Lab 4 and the Tidy Trax label, whose Tidy girls - Lisa Lashes, Anne Savage etc - always enjoyed a huge turnout whenever they played sets. There was also a massive outbreak of local DJs, all of whom all got the chance to play alongside the more established acts. People like Rocket Ron, Flaz, Kev Inch, Pez and the Riot Brothers all provided tunes for the Class A stained crowd in the early millennium.

Eat Your Words - organised by DJ Euphoria - became the night, and it was also the emblem of the culture at that time. For a while it seemed as though everyone you knew was either a DJ or wanted to be one, or wanted to have sex with one.

It sounds corny now, but at the time a lot of people felt as though they part of something. You just had to look for the Mr Happy with a gun car sticker and the mid-week stare into oblivion to recognise a fellow weekender. We go to Q's first, but I regret it as soon as we reach the door. A bouncer is asking a gaggle of young girls for ID. They look really young and drunk, and they beg and pout and push their tits up, but the bouncer still says no. My mate and I walk past them and go in.

We are stood in the main artery of Townie central. Scores of underage girls dance like strippers to the worst music imaginable. Ace of Base, Peter Andre and Snap are blasted out amongst other records you never thought you'd hear played in a pub again. What the fuck are doin' here? I ask. I dunno, my mate says. Just thought it would kick things off. I start drinking heavily, because I feel really old and out of place. The young smart/casual psychos dance around the jailbait, pissed and horny. My mate and I stand just behind the DJ box.

I go to the bar and order a couple more Buds and a Jack D, straight, no ice. The DJ is the usual stuffed-with-his-own-self-importance-fuckwit, and he insists on talking over every song. The music's bad enough, but his constant sermonising only heightens the sheer awfulness of it all. The Venga Boys blast out and I feel my grip on reality slip. My mate hugs his record box, protecting it from the rancid cheese emitting from the speakers.

This is incredible, I say. This is possibly the worst music I've ever heard in my life. It's like I've opened a door to the early nineties. I just need a few goes on a bandit and some cheap cider and then I'm there. Shit, where's me baseball cap?

My mate sways for a second, and then disappears to the toilet to powder his nose. I continue to cane the drink. My mate returns, his equilibrium altered and his centre of gravity shifted. Y'know what I'd do? I say. What's that then? he says, chugging a bottle of WKD Blue. I'd advertise this place as The Worst Music in Hull. I'd make it the pub's theme, I mean jeezus, this place is begging for someone to highlight the irony in all this madness. We need an anchor, a rock, a realisation, I say. This..can't..be..real. My mate says, Stop talkin' like a fuckin' twonk, shit's already fucked up as it is. A girl who looks like she has only just learnt how to spell intoxicated is dragged into the centre of the dance floor. I notice she's wearing a veil. She's on her hen night. A stripper is smuggled in under a blanket like paedophile to a court, and the Satanic DJ plays Leave Your Hat On - the Tom Jones version, of course.

The stripper is dressed like a copper. He flings his hat off to reveal permed, receding, dyed-blond hair, scraped back into a ponytail. He's about as tall as Tom Cruise - a fake-tanned, all-over waxed, wannabe God that falls short in every aspect of the definition. He launches into his routine above a cowering girl trapped in a chair who looks young enough to be his daughter. There's nothing remotely sexy about it, but the surrounding jailbait whoop it up anyway.

The whole degrading spectacle is like some ancient pagan ritual. I buy three luminescent test-tube shaped drinks from a girl that walks past and drink them one after another. They all taste like carpet cleaning solution and burn my throat as they make their way down.

We have to get out, I say. This whole scene is too fuckin' weird. My mate's eyes are glazed, because the coke and booze are currently shaking hands inside his head. You're right, he says. Let's fuckin' do one.. I feel jangled somewhat as I leave the pub. My whole week would revolve around the weekend. I would finish work on the Friday, and then I would get ready and go out.

thisisUll.com Continued .. Next Page

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